Our new variety of lily plant originated as an embryo-cultured seedling which first flowered in Woodland, Wash., in 1995. The breeding efforts had as their objective the production of large-flowered Oriental and Oriental/Aurelian hybrids in shades of yellow, gold, and peach, suited to forcing into flower out of season, heretofore unknown in the lily breeding art.
Catherine J. Van der Salm achieved the desired objective by pollinating a yellow-banded white Oriental/Aurelian hybrid with a soft gold flowered Oriental/Aurelian hybrid. The unnamed Oriental/Aurelian seedling which was the mother plant of `Georgette` was a hybrid between the Oriental Lilium `White Mountain` and a second-generation Oriental/Aurelian hybrid. This mother plant was produced by embryo culturing by Judith L. Freeman. The pollen parent was a complex second-generation Oriental/Aurelian hybrid with large, wide tepalled golden yellow flowers, produced by embryo culturing by Judith L. Freeman from a cross between an outfacing yellow complex Oriental/Aurelian hybrid and a pendant buff to gold complex Oriental/Aurelian hybrid. Judith L. Freeman produced one of the original paternal grandparents by embryo-culturing as well, from material unique to her own breeding lines and not available in the trade.
The flowers of our new lily are characterized by an outfacing to upfacing orientation, large size, starry form, ascending pedicels, and particularly by their yellow coloration with a deeper flush of rich yellow along the basal midribs and with inconspicuously colored papillae and lightly ruffled outer tepals. This combination is completely new in the Oriental and Oriental/Aurelian hybrid lilies. In addition, the clone possesses to a high degree desirable characteristics of hybrid vigor. The clone is a good grower and propagator, as observed at Woodland, Wash.
Our new variety of lily plant has been asexually reproduced by us and under our direction at Woodland, Wash. Successive generations produced by natural propagation from bulblets, by bulb scale propagation, and by tissue culturing from bulb scale explants have demonstrated that the novel and distinctive characteristics of our new variety are fixed and hold true under asexual propagation from generation to generation.